The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout Page A

an electron microscope at the cells of Schistosoma, and because she loved facts the way an artist would love color, because she experienced a quiet thrill at the precision science aimed for, she had loved the days she’d spent in that lab. When she heard on the television about the incident in Shirley Falls, saw the imam walking away from the storefront mosque on a downtown street that looked terribly deserted, all sorts of feelings flooded her, not the least being an almost out-of-body nostalgia for a town that had once been familiar to her, but also—and almost immediately—a concern for the Somalis. She’d right away looked into it: Yes, those refugees who came from the southern regions of Somalia had showed Schistosoma haematobium eggs in their urine, but the bigger problem was—not surprisingly to Pam—malaria, and before they were allowed to come to the United States they were given a single dose of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine for malaria parasitemia, and also albendazole for intestinal parasite therapy. What concerned Pam more, though, was learning that the Somali Bantu—a darker-skinned group, apparently shunned in Somalia, having come there as slaves from Tanzania and Mozambique a couple of centuries before—showed a much higher rate of schistosomiasis and, according to what Pam had read from the International Organization for Migration, also serious mental health problems of trauma and depression. The Somali Bantu, the Organization said, had certain superstitions: They might burn the skin of areas affected by disease, or pull out the baby teeth of a small child with diarrhea.
    Part of what Pam felt when she read that was what she felt now remembering it: I am living the wrong life . It was a thought that made no sense. It’s true she missed the smells of a lab: acetone, paraffin, alcohol, formaldehyde. She missed the swoosh of a Bunsen burner, the glass slides and pipettes, the particular and deep concentration of those around her. But she had twin boys now—with white skin, perfect teeth, no burn marks anywhere—and lab work was a life of the past. Still, the variety of problems, parasitological and psychological, of this refugee population made Pam feel homesick for whatever life she was not having, a life that would not feel so oddly wrong.
    These days life was her townhouse, her boys and their private school, her husband, Ted, who ran the New Jersey office of a large pharmaceutical company and so had a reverse commute, her part-time job at the hospital, and a social life that required seemingly endless deliveries from the dry cleaners. But Pam was often homesick. For what? She could not have said, and it made her ashamed. Pam drank more wine, looked behind her, and there stepping through the foyer of the Boathouse bar was dear Bob, like a big St. Bernard dog. He could have been wearing a wooden cask of whiskey around his neck, ready to paw through the autumn leaves to get someone out. Oh, Bobby!
    “You would think,” she confided, nodding toward the Germans, who had only now stopped hovering nearby, “that after starting two world wars they wouldn’t be so pushy.”
    “That’s the dumbest thing ever,” Bob said pleasantly. He was watching his whiskey, swirling it slowly. “We’ve started lots of wars and we’re still pushy.”
    “Exactly. So you just got back last night? Tell me.” With her head ducked toward his, she listened carefully, was transported back to the town of Shirley Falls, where she had not been in many years. “Oh, Bobby,” she said sadly, more than once, as she listened.
    Finally she straightened up. “By God.” She got the bartender’s attention, indicated another round. “Okay. First of all: Can I ask a stupid question? Why did he do this?”
    “Very good question.” Bob nodded. “I don’t know what’s behind it. He seems so amazed that it turned out to be serious. Honestly, I don’t know.”
    Pam tucked her hair behind her ear. “All right. Well, second of